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Quick Salad Dressing
Beat 1 egg (white first, then add yolk); 1 tsp. each, salt, sugar, dry mustard; little cayenne pepper; pour in very slowly while beating 3/4 cup Wessons oil which has been
— Mrs. John Legg
on ice, juice of 1 lemon.
This is a hand-beaten mayonnaise, printed with the contributor's name accidentally set into the middle of the sentence. Read it as "...while beating 3/4 cup Wesson's oil which has been on ice, juice of 1 lemon."
- The hinge: add the oil drop by dropThe emulsion forms only if the first ounce or so of oil goes in almost a drop at a time while the beating never stops. Once the mixture visibly thickens you can pour in a thin steady stream. Rushing the start is the single reason quick dressings break.
- Cold oil, room-temperature eggChilling the oil, as the recipe directs, makes it slightly more viscous and easier to hold in suspension, which matters when you are beating by hand. The egg itself should not be refrigerator-cold; a cool egg and cool oil together emulsify sluggishly.
- Wesson oilIn this period Wesson was refined cottonseed oil, sold as a bland, neutral alternative to olive oil. Any neutral oil works: canola, grapeseed, sunflower. Extra-virgin olive oil is usually avoided in mayonnaise, as it can taste bitter when emulsified, particularly in a high-speed blender.
- Beating the white firstFrothing the white before adding the yolk means this is a whole-egg mayonnaise, which will be looser than a yolk-only one; expect a pourable dressing rather than a stiff spoonable one.
- The salt is generousA full teaspoon of salt in roughly a cup of dressing reads sharp to modern palates, as does a full teaspoon of dry mustard. Start with half of each, then adjust after the lemon juice goes in.
- Lemon juice lastThe juice of one lemon is 2 to 3 tablespoons. Adding it at the end thins the emulsion slightly and brightens it; if the dressing seizes up too thick before you get there, the lemon will loosen it.
- Raw eggNothing here is cooked. If you are serving anyone pregnant, elderly, very young or immunocompromised, use a pasteurized egg or pasteurized liquid egg. Keep the finished dressing refrigerated and use it within three or four days.
- YieldAbout one cup, enough to dress salad for six to eight. A blender or immersion blender does the same job in under a minute with the oil poured in a thread.
Homemade mayonnaise was still commonly made at home in American kitchens into the 1930s, and church and club cookbooks carry many "quick," "never-fail" and "one-minute" versions, each promising to spare the cook the long steady beating a classical dressing demanded. The mention of Wesson oil is consistent with a date after the first decade of the twentieth century, when refined cottonseed oil was marketed to home cooks as cheaper and more neutral than imported olive oil; brand names appearing in recipe text this way are more typical of a community cookbook than a professional one. The Philathea class was a Baptist-rooted young women's Sunday school movement that spread widely across North America in the early 1900s; its chapters raised funds much as sewing circles and ladies' aid societies did, by collecting members' recipes and selling them with the contributor's name attached.